It doesn't make you better. The US, Chinese, and Russian governments are pretty much the same.

I fully agree with this. The gouvernments of these countries are not different at all. They are "oh, let's stop the killing" when it's in their favor yet when it's not they vote against it. I have nothing against the russian, american or chinese people, but man, do your gouvernments suck!

I fully agree with this. The gouvernments of these countries are not different at all. They are "oh, let's stop the killing" when it's in their favor yet when it's not they vote against it. I have nothing against the russian, american or chinese people, but man, do your gouvernments suck!

Yeah but you don't see China crying about the opium wars every time things don't go their way...

The UN sucks, they have no power, no influence and zero will to act on anything and the things they decide about are too few, too little and too late. A massive waste of resources. What the UN decides has little meaning to anyone, because if there's something they will never do, it's to take action.

What they should've done long ago is put down forces in the area and put and end to all the damned fighting that keeps on going. To stop Israels expansio and to stop the Hamas terrorists. But that'll never fucking happen.

Israel is wrong about the settlements. But the palestinians and Hamas are even more wrong. Both need to drop their stuff and get over this crap already.

True, the UN has very little power, and funny enough the idea was that it was supposed to be stronger then the League of Nations, but it really isn't that much stronger. It's just a place for the strong countries to flex their muscles at eachother.

Yeah but you don't see China crying about the opium wars every time things don't go their way...

To be honest I don't know China's stance on the opium wars. But I know their stance on Syria for example. People die there yet they, and Russia, and Iran refuse to act.
I know China's stance on reducing pollution, I saw pictures of how their cities look nowadays based on that, even if there was a worldwide pact. It wasn't signed by them, Australia and USA, the Kyoto pact.
I know China's stance on North Korea's bomb building for ages.
I know China's stance on the 2-3 japanese islands they think are theirs, despite the UN saying they're not when they sent military boats to them as a show of force and so on.

Same way, of Russia I won't even speak actually.
But for US, their stance on Israel yet... there's more stuff, isn't there? They complain of how workers are treated in China, yet if we look at places like Wallmart and stuff you see... there's not really much of a difference. Sure, you don't use kids, but still. They complain about countries spying on their people, yet they wanted stuff like ACTA, SOPA etc.

Let's be honest, the powerful nations are the most hypocritical. They want to preserve their power but not let others get power through same means as they did because "it's evil".

Wadsworth: Professor Plum, you were once a professor of psychiatry specializing in helping paranoid and homicidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur.
Professor Plum: Yes, but now I work for the United Nations.
Wadsworth: So your work has not changed.

Not quite. Here we have a problem. The powerful nations can and will negate UN ideas, but the weak ones need to think twice, because they're weak and will be invaded if they do. Libya did for example, and they got invaded. Yet we have cases where even the threat of major country intervention caused things to settle of fear of being invaded, for example, Greece and Turkey. They really dislike eachother, and politically they're fighting over Cyprus, and they were in the brink of war several times, yet they didn't go to war because they knew they'd both we beaten into submission by the UN. Same for... Slovenia and Croatia, both having a real border problem with one claiming the other took their land and stuff, yet neither acting towards war even if both belive it's their land.

So, the UN does do some good things... but mostly for the little weaker countries where neither of the major actors has an interest.

---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 05:42 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Purlina

I would assume they have a negative opinion about it? I mean foreigners come into your country, carve out territories, and force you to accept that opium will be sold to your citizens?

Don't like it? No problem, they just shoot you...

Kind of like the war on dugs, but imagine that the drug dealers are backed by several world powers.

I would assume they have a negative opinion about it? I mean foreigners come into your country, carve out territories, and force you to accept that opium will be sold to your citizens?

Don't like it? No problem, they just shoot you...

Kind of like the war on dugs, but imagine that the drug dealers are backed by several world powers.

Yeah, but they took their lumps, got over it, and in the end they got Hong Kong out of the deal. I should say they lost Hong Kong out of the deal, but eventually got it back complete with world class city on it.

'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers clogged with rotting red
And there they lay I damn me eyes
All lookouts clapped on Paradise
All souls bound just contrarywise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Yeah, but they took their lumps, got over it, and in the end they got Hong Kong out of the deal. I should say they lost Hong Kong out of the deal, but eventually got it back complete with world class city on it.

Exactly, but Israel keeps playing the Holocaust and anti Semite card at every turn...

Well to be fair, losing an extremely short war with relatively few casualties and being forced to accept opium for silver isn't really comparable to the wholesale elimination of the majority of your cultural/ethnic group in a large part of the world.

'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers clogged with rotting red
And there they lay I damn me eyes
All lookouts clapped on Paradise
All souls bound just contrarywise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Stop it with that 'wiped from the face of the planet' propaganda. It was a mistranslation taken out of context.

He wants the zionists to be removed, much akin to how people felt about the nazis ... that didn't mean that people wanted 'germany wiped from the planet', they just wanted hitler and his regime gone and no longer a threat to people and their nations. This is -exactly- the same thing here.

This doesn't mean that I think the guy is a good leader. And even -if- you think the guy is a creep, doesn't mean the average Iranian citizen is crazy or violent. That would be like assuming that George W or Obama's actions represented the people as a whole, and if you paid attention any in the last 12 years, the dissent of the u.s. public against these two people and their mistakes, has been quite strong, showing that even an elected official rarely represents the people he is 'speaking for'.

More to the point, Israeli leaders have been violating human rights. They essentially are trying to wipe Palestine off the map, because they don't see they have any right to anything ... even though they and their ancestors (Palestinians) were living there prior to the establishment of the Israeli state. It is like a modern day manifest destiny, and the Palestanians are the native american indians.

I'd like to see them both live in peace, to share the land. I don't expect their government to ever allow that, but I bet the people themselves, besides extremists on both sides, would rather that, than live in the the mess they've had to endure for decades.

I'm against any extremists ... from christian to muslim to zionists to just plain maniacal wackjobs.

The sad reality is, most of us can just be happy we don't live there. At the end of the day, the people on both sides, are all humans. If people just learned a bit of respect for each other, and to not segregate themselves for every little thing, and accept their neighbor as just another person, live and let live, things would go a lot smoother in the world. Too bad, power, greed, entitlement, and (hateful*) bigotry rule the world. (*bigotry like Archie Bunker in All in the Family is tolerable, simply for the fact, he himself is rather tolerant and not hateful or violent)

Well to be fair, losing an extremely short war with relatively few casualties and being forced to accept opium for silver isn't really comparable to the wholesale elimination of the majority of your cultural/ethnic group in a large part of the world.

But also to be fair, why do they get to use that card against every nation / person? Shouldn't the use of the Holocaust card be restricted to the countries actually involved in the killings...?

But also to be fair, why do they get to use that card against every nation / person? Shouldn't the use of the Holocaust card be restricted to the countries actually involved in the killings...?

Like I don't know, Germany?

Oh yeah, I'm not saying that it's not time for them to move on. They have a country of their own that's a regional power now. It's time to move on. Remember the holocaust as something to avoid in the future, of course, but dwelling in the past isn't a good idea either.

'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers clogged with rotting red
And there they lay I damn me eyes
All lookouts clapped on Paradise
All souls bound just contrarywise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

To be honest I don't know China's stance on the opium wars. But I know their stance on Syria for example. People die there yet they, and Russia, and Iran refuse to act.
I know China's stance on reducing pollution, I saw pictures of how their cities look nowadays based on that, even if there was a worldwide pact. It wasn't signed by them, Australia and USA, the Kyoto pact.
I know China's stance on North Korea's bomb building for ages.
I know China's stance on the 2-3 japanese islands they think are theirs, despite the UN saying they're not when they sent military boats to them as a show of force and so on.

Same way, of Russia I won't even speak actually.
But for US, their stance on Israel yet... there's more stuff, isn't there? They complain of how workers are treated in China, yet if we look at places like Wallmart and stuff you see... there's not really much of a difference. Sure, you don't use kids, but still. They complain about countries spying on their people, yet they wanted stuff like ACTA, SOPA etc.

Let's be honest, the powerful nations are the most hypocritical. They want to preserve their power but not let others get power through same means as they did because "it's evil".

The opium wars happened over a hundred years ago, but it was still a terrible terrible time for China. All orchestrated by the British.
I suppose the stuff that Japan did to China in WW2 trumps all of that though, so it might be forgotten.

See? Even more examples of how no-one cares about what the UN says.

We all know that US politics is ripe with hypocricy and double-standards though. No offense meant to any US citizens. But maybe you feel the same way about it?

---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 04:56 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Arnorei

Not quite. Here we have a problem. The powerful nations can and will negate UN ideas, but the weak ones need to think twice, because they're weak and will be invaded if they do. Libya did for example, and they got invaded. Yet we have cases where even the threat of major country intervention caused things to settle of fear of being invaded, for example, Greece and Turkey. They really dislike eachother, and politically they're fighting over Cyprus, and they were in the brink of war several times, yet they didn't go to war because they knew they'd both we beaten into submission by the UN. Same for... Slovenia and Croatia, both having a real border problem with one claiming the other took their land and stuff, yet neither acting towards war even if both belive it's their land.

So, the UN does do some good things... but mostly for the little weaker countries where neither of the major actors has an interest.

---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 05:42 PM ----------

Ah, didn't know of that, sounds quite bad.

So the UN is a power tool for policies of the richest countries. No surprise there

Turkey and Greece are co-dependant on each other and on the UN, and Europe. So ofcourse it would've been bad for them. Looking at how Greece is now, it's obvious they couldn't have handled the sanctions. Because that's all there would be, sanctions. The UN wouldn't dare stand in between two nations armies. They've shown that before. Small African countries hardly count as nations nor armies.

It's a function that I think the EU does much better than the UN, keeping peace and co-dependance.

---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 05:05 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Reeve

Oh yeah, I'm not saying that it's not time for them to move on. They have a country of their own that's a regional power now. It's time to move on. Remember the holocaust as something to avoid in the future, of course, but dwelling in the past isn't a good idea either.

You seem blissfully unaware of the retorics pushed by many extremist muslims, like in Iran. It's the same thing all over again. The same propaganda. It's really quite frightening.
There is a very real risk that it could happen again, or that it would be attempted. Without the US at it's back, Israel might've been attacked a lot more. The US keeps the balance of power tipped in Israels favor, for good and bad.

What the Chinese decide they want to do doesn't affect the UN's complete inability to act or do anything useful. Kosovo is a horrendous reminder of that, where people fleeing persecution were turned around into the arms of the people that came to commit genocide upon then. UN soldiers stood completely unable to act as they saw genocide happen, many of them were really angry about it too. They could've saved people, but they weren't allowed to.

A lot of things have changed since, Lybia(sp) is a good example of preventive force, UN soldiers PKing are now allowed to use force to prevent violance, what happend in the wars on Balkan brought some much needed changes about to what soldiers under UN flag are allowed to do.

Things change. I'm not saying UN is perfect but you don't seem to be aware of these changes. There has been several reforms that gives soldiers on UN missions increased mandate to use lethal force. What France is doing in Mali is also a good example, not sure if it's UN mandated but if it was, UN forces would be allowed to do similiar things, that is acting, going on the offensive.

What France and Sweden did in Congo in the mid 00 was also similiar, going after militia groups, capture-or-kill raids, to protect civilians.

Last edited by Jackmoves; 2013-01-31 at 04:20 PM.

The nerve is called the "nerve of awareness". You cant dissect it. Its a current that runs up the center of your spine. I dont know if any of you have sat down, crossed your legs, smoked DMT, and watch what happens... but what happens to me is this big thing goes RRRRRRRRRAAAAAWWW! up my spine and flashes in my brain... well apparently thats whats going to happen if I do this stuff...

You seem blissfully unaware of the retorics pushed by many extremist muslims, like in Iran. It's the same thing all over again. The same propaganda. It's really quite frightening.
There is a very real risk that it could happen again, or that it would be attempted. Without the US at it's back, Israel might've been attacked a lot more. The US keeps the balance of power tipped in Israels favor, for good and bad.

Being attacked is not the same as a campaign of racial extermination by the government in the country in which you're currently living though. It's not a valid comparison. If you're worried about threatened genocide, that's a fine thing to talk about, but the Jews are in no danger of anything like the Holocaust in modern Israel. No one is going to round them up and put them in death camps. They have a strong democratic government, and a powerful military.

'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers clogged with rotting red
And there they lay I damn me eyes
All lookouts clapped on Paradise
All souls bound just contrarywise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!